Three is Company
by toonsta
Summary: The real irony is that his relationship with Elena doesn't work without Damon. 2.18 through 2.22, Stefan reflects.


**AN:** Just watched 2.18 again and was inspired by that awesome Damon/Stefan moment! Enjoy!

**Disclaimer:** I don't own it!

**Three is Company**

Damon's words haunt him.

"… that's why I didn't tell you, cause you would've never been able to do it. Don't get me wrong, Stefan, I don't mind being the bad guy. I'll make all the life and death decisions, while you're busy worrying about collateral damage. I'll even let her hate me for it. But at the end of the day, I'll be the one to keep her alive."

The truth in them is unmistakeable. It is a blow that physically hurts more than Damon is capable of hurting him with his fists.

But the real horror of it is in a realisation that he has avoided for too long. He needs Damon for his relationship with Elena to work.

Damon makes the choices he can't make. Damon makes the choices Elena would hate him for making… but also the choices that keep her alive. He can't have a relationship with a woman who hates him and he can't have a relationship with a dead woman. Damon is the one who makes their relationship possible. Damon is the one who allows him to straddle the line, to have her alive and still loving him.

The irony of being in and hating their three's-a-crowd relationship is that no matter how much he wants it to be just the two of them again, they don't work without Damon. They may have worked at first, when there weren't any difficult decisions to make and when she wasn't hell bent on dying for the sake of everyone she loved, but now it doesn't. Damon knows it and he knows it. Maybe even Elena knows it subconsciously… she always manages to keep his brother just inside her orbit.

It's 1864 all over again and he can't have Elena unless he allows Damon to have some part of her as well. Only this time it isn't because of the unadulterated selfishness of the woman they both love… it's because the selfless, moral part of her refuses to love someone who will do whatever it takes to keep her alive, because unlike Katherine she isn't willing to live at any cost… and yet to have her they must still, somehow, keep her alive.

He thinks that somehow, he has become the only dispensable corner of the triangle. The broken teenage girl inside Elena who just wants her parents back and who shivers at the sight of blood wants him. Unfortunately she isn't that girl anymore. That's mostly his fault. Now she's a jaded, resolute woman who can look on mangled bodies with resignation and make deals with originals that trade her own life for the lives of others. And she still wants him… for now. But she needs Damon. She needs someone who is capable of doing what needs to be done. She wants him because there's a part of her that still desperately wants to be fragile and broken instead of jaded, that still wants to believe that her parents death is the worst thing this world has in store for her.

He thinks that when she finally admits to herself that she's not that girl anymore it will be Damon, not him, that she chooses.

Maybe his pretence will be a part of that choice. Maybe she'll realise that instead of being horrified, he's grateful for the choices Damon makes. Maybe she'll recognise the truth in Damon's words after he's fed her his blood.

"Admit it, you just wish you had the balls to do it yourself!"

And Damon's right, of course, but it only makes him angrier to hear the words… to feel the frustration of being locked into this version of himself, this helpless, fragile, dependant person who cannot DO anything. Who cannot say out loud that yes, he agrees, he'd rather have her around as a vampire than not have her at all… just like he had wanted Damon to live no matter the cost. He's living a lie, he's trying to convince himself and her that he's not a monster… but he is. He's a wolf in sheep's clothing. Damon doesn't bother with the pretence and the irony is that she loves him anyway. But Damon's monster has never been quite as monstrous as his own.

His monster claws against the restrictions of his conscience, of all the 'should's' he has imposed upon himself. He should feel this way, he should act that way, he should trust Elena's instincts, he should let Elena put herself in danger, he should stop Bonnie from killing herself… so many lines he's drawn for himself that he's too afraid to cross. So many lines that keep him from massacring towns full of people. Sometimes he feels the necessity of those lines, sometimes he feels that they are right, but sometimes they are just intellectual lines. Then it's all about mind over matter, fake it till you make it.

She'll learn someday what happens when he crosses the lines. He isn't like Damon. He can't dance on either side and remain always, always, inherently human.

And it's because of all this that he takes the blood that Klaus offers. He stands in Ric's apartment knowing that he has to save his brother. Because he's the reason that Damon's a vampire, the reason that Damon died in the first place, the reason that Damon has experienced all sorts of special types of misery… but also because if Damon dies, he won't only loose Damon. He'll lose Elena too. He'll lose the only two people who mean anything to him.

The monster was clawing its way out anyway. His corner of the triangle was going to be lopped off sooner or later. At least this way they would live.

That was truth he hid from. He'd take them, alive or undead, human or monstrous, no matter the cost.

He just wouldn't say it out loud.

And that was the difference between Damon and him. Damon would never be paralysed in the pretence.

**AN:** Reviews are so very much appreciated, in fact the encouragement I got after the last story I wrote is the reason I managed this one! I was thinking of doing a second part to this, a Katherine centric piece... let me know if you'd be interested! Thanks for reading.


End file.
